Witnesses: Defendant bought Tanzania bomb truck

Khalfan Khamis Mohamed

From Phil Hirschkorn CNN New York Bureau

NEW YORK (CNN) -- What Khalfan Khamis Mohamed told the FBI immediately after his arrest is expected to be the focus of testimony Monday in the trial of four men charged with connections to the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Mohamed, a 27-year-old from Tanzania, is the only defendant accused of a direct role in the embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 11 Tanzanians, including two who worked in the embassy, on August 7, 1998.

A simultaneous truck bombing outside the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 213 people, including 12 Americans. Two other defendants -- Mohamed al-'Owhali, a 24-year-old Saudi, and Mohamed Odeh, a 36-year-old Jordanian -- are charged in that attack.

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K. K. Mohamed, arrested in Cape Town, South Africa, on October 5, 1999, was interrogated by FBI agents for two days before being transported to the United States. Mohamed agreed to speak to agents overseas without having a lawyer present.

Mohamed's current defense attorneys sought to have Mohamed's statements suppressed, but U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand allowed them into the trial.

Prosecutors have been introducing evidence against Mohamed since last week.

Tanzanian witnesses described seeing Mohamed meeting with men who, evidence has shown, purchased the 1987 Nissan Atlas refrigeration truck used to carry the Tanzania bomb.

FBI agents testified they found Mohamed's passport photo inside the house where one of the truck buyers lived.

Witnesses also testified that Mohamed rented the house where according to prosecutors the Tanzania bomb was constructed, and that he owned the white 1989 Suzuki Samarai jeep that according to prosecutors was used as a utility vehicle by the bombers.

Several FBI agents testified Monday morning about their search of the house and the Suzuki.

Mohamed is the third defendant, following Odeh and al-'Owhali, to have his post-arrest statements used against him in court.

A fourth defendant, Wadih el Hage, a 40-year-old naturalized American, is not accused of a direct role in the bombings. He is accused of perjury in his statements to investigators and to a federal grand jury.

All four defendants are accused of participating in a decade-long conspiracy, allegedly led by wealthy Saudi expatriate Osama bin Laden, to kill Americans and destroy U.S. property.